Tribeca Film Institute Expands Support for Caribbean Filmmakers

The Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) has announced the expansion of the TFI Latin America Media Arts Fund, including the first TFI/WorldView Partnership grants.

The grants, which this year total over $90,000 – the most in the Fund’s four year history and over 30% more than last year’s awards — support innovative film and video artists living and working in the Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America.

The TFI Latin America Media Arts Fund’s grants are awarded to feature-length documentaries, animated films, or hybrid films that are story-driven and in advanced stages of development, production or post-production with no U.S. or Latin American distribution in place. In addition to financial support, each grantee will receive year round guidance from TFI which includes professional development opportunities, pitch training workshops, and industry one-on-one meetings with international decision makers.

A new partnership with WorldView will award three additional $10,000 development grants to filmmaking teams based in Latin America and the Caribbean. Fund recipients will be announced at the Tribeca Film Festival in April. The Fund is sponsored by MOVIECITY and CANACINE.

“Since inception, the Fund has sought to encourage Latin American artists to redefine, invent, explore and create stories that reflect their diverse cultures,” said Ryan Harrington, director of documentary programming for TFI. “We are proud to expand our support for Latin filmmakers who bravely push the boundaries of artistic storytelling, and with the help of our partners, look forward to sharing their diverse visions with wider audiences.”

“WorldView are delighted to be partnering and sharing in the vision with TFI and we look forward to co-presenting the initiative together with TFI to emerging storytellers in Argentina, Chile, and Trinidad & Tobago in the coming months” said Himesh Kar, consultant at WorldView.

In addition to its support of filmmakers based in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Fund will also continue to provide grants to Latino filmmakers 21+ living and working in the US through the Heineken VOCES Award, which supports feature-length narrative and documentary projects in all stages of production that explore stories reflecting diverse cultures. The first-ever VOCES grant winners were announced at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.